Best brass?

R

ReloadKy

New member
I am in the market to add a 7mm-08 to my safe. In doing so I am going to add the components to reload for that rifle. I already load for 7 mag so I have a selection of bullets on the shelf to choose from. I have been browsing different brands of brass to use for this new rifle. I read mixed reviews on different sites on different brands of brass. Personally I have purchased hornady and starline brass with no real issues and adequate accuracy. I have always heard lapua, norma and nosler are high end.

So what say you, what brass is the best?? I want long life and great accuracy.
 
Starline makes 7mm-08. They are highly regarded for their quality and are cheaper than Lapua or Norma by a lot. I have bought 200 in 7mm-08 but have not loaded it yet. All of them dropped right in perfectly in my case gage. Midway USA and Midsouth Shooters Supply carry them and Starline sells direct through their website.
https://www.starlinebrass.com/
I toyed with the idea of making 7mm-08 from LC 7.62, but concluded it was more trouble than it was worth, and bought Starline.
 
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If my only concern was making it last, I would buy ADG .308 Win brass and neck it down and then outside neck turn the minimum my 7-08 chamber required to let it chamber from the magazine, as that minimizes neck expansion during firing, causing the neck to be worked the least during each resizing and loading cycle. I would be using either a Lee Collet Die or a bushing die or a conventional resizing die with a custom honed neck to resize the case the minimum necessary amount. ADG brass has extra hard double-struck heads for LC level hardness. It has extra brass around the head specifically to maximize case life (though that comes at the cost of a couple of grains less case capacity than most have).

If that wasn't my concern, I can say Lapua and Norma probably have the tightest dimensions with lower average wall thickness runout than anybody else and rarely any flash hole burrs. They are closer to "benchrest prepped" out of the box than anybody else. Norma, as part of its QC process, periodically takes cases from its production line and checks that they can be fired and reloaded at least ten times without failures. If ten times is enough for you, then Norma might be where you look.

Starline is good brass. It's .308 Win brass has harder heads than anyone but LC and ADG. Its neck wall runout is about the same as ADG and about twice what Lapua and Norma have, but still perfectly good for all but benchrest, and you can always outside-turn the necks if it bothers you, but I would see how well you can make it shoot first.
 
When I shot in 1,000 yard F Class Competition, Lapua was used almost to a man. Just saying.
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true enough, even two years years ago it seemed every long range competitor used Lapua or Norma. Lately brass from small US firms is becoming more and more popular. ADG, Alpha and Peterson have been getting traction in that market. Nothing wrong with Lapua I have bought a lot of Lapua in the last few years but these days though I look to the US made brass first, guess it's just the redneck in me :)

For that matter I shot some USA made Starline a few years back. Don't know if it was just the lot number or my loads but they started getting a number of sloppy primer pockets after 8 or 10 reloadings so I retired the whole batch. That was in .260 Rem , which as I said earlier, I tend to load to the fastest node in. Common sense 101 tells me that the hotter the load, the shorter the brass life. Case necks held up well and I was annealing every firing at that time and brass seemed to be in decent shape straight from the box

Speaking of which, one of the best things about Peterson and Alpha is they ship in MTM containers so no neck dings. Not sure about ADG on that one
 
When i reamed the chamber on my hunting rifle to 7mm-08AI, i was using PPU brass. Mostly due to it being inexpensive.
With some prep work, Alliant PP2000MR, Berger 140gr VLD i was getting ES 6, SD 2.

I tried some 7.62LC. Didn't care for it. Lot of time spent deburring & case volume low.

I'm looking to build a dedicated range rifle, and since i already have the reamer, gages, dies, i'm going 7mm-08AI. This time with a 28(maybe 30) inch barrel.

Since i've been hearing good about them, and always pleasant in talking with them, i'm going to try the Peterson brass. Doesn't hurt that they are local also.
 
best brass

I have been reloading for a custom conversion 98k Mauser in 6mm Remington for more than 50 years.
Of the original 100 rounds purchased, 82 are still performing perfectly.
My second choice would be Federal, and a non-choice would be Starline that I found to be “soft” and not long lasting.
 
When I built my 260 a couple of years ago I had a similar experience with looking for brass. I actually have several K of .308 in hand but due to having grandsons who will inherit my junk, I figured keeping headstamped cases would be the best route.

That said I purchased 50 or 100ea of the "best reviewed" cases some listed above. My main goal was simply holding up to a number of loads and excellent hunting accuracy.

I pulled 5 cases of 4 brands and started loading. Granted I wasn't pushing it to the top but still was only about 3/4 of a grain from it with H4350. My findings were that they all held up just fine for over 10 loadings and only required annealing the neck after around 8.

When the dust settled I have found that Starline is far easier to get, as well as less abusive on the wallet when I lose them in the field. Most of my shooting is feral hog reduction and I'm not always in a place that makes finding one or more cases easy.

If you're doing informal target or simply hunting loads I would give them a good look and maybe try some Starline out.
 
One thing you can do with Starline or Winchester or other less expensive bulk brass is find out if your gun cares about the last 0.001" of runout or not. You do this by sorting the best and worst cases out of the lot and put your best load in both and see if you can measure a difference on paper. Benchrest guys often can tell, but the average shooter frequently has enough other small sources of error that this particular one is masked by the others.
 
I don't believe there is any such thing as best in any product. Each one has it fan's! If you think paying a lot of money for brass will get you better brass, by all means buy it. If you don't you'll never know how good or bad it may be! If your a bit more thrifty, try what people might call lower end brass. Ya don't and you not gonna know just how good it may or may not be. I used mostly Winchester brass anymore. Easy to find around here and never had much trouble getting 1" or less groups with any problem I could blame on the brass. Then again I've found very few brands I couldn't get 5 reloads out of, I do shoot hot loads. Best way to try brass is to simply buy some and try it, brand is not all that important
 
I really like Winchester Brass. Others may not, but I have used a ton of that stuff in many calibers. Never really had a brass issue. I have also had good results with RP and Hornady brass.

I normally buy a bunch of loaded ammo when I buy a new rifle and shoot it up for brass. Then reload them.
 
It's all in the purpose. It has to be asked which brass is best for "what?" If you want precision for benchrest or F class, you may find the high-end brands are best, as mentioned earlier. On the other hand, if you want the most space for powder, you may well be looking at Hornady and Winchester and, if you also need more precision, selecting and prepping them to get the dimensional tolerances you want. If you are shooting a self-loader, you probably want the hardest heads and rims to withstand violent extraction, in which case you will want LC, Starline, or ADG.

You can also get a situation where, as I mentioned earlier, other factors impose your precision limits that aren't curable with brass, like a loose chamber, a mainspring that's getting weak, primer seating practice that is inadequate, poor stock inletting or bedding, a muzzle crown that needs to be redone, etc.

But sometimes not.

One of the authors of the 1994 Precision Shooting Reloading Guide mentioned a 300 Win Mag he just could not get to group below about two moa, no matter what he did with his loading practices until one day, on a lark, he decided to outside turn his case necks. It instantly became a one moa gun. In most guns, you can't see any difference made by outside neck turning, but in that particular gun, it made all the difference, and the author didn't know why. I had an analogous experience with deburring flash holes for 2520 powder. It shot 50% bigger groups than stick powders did in the same rifle (an M1A), but when I deburred the flash holes, it started shooting the smaller groups my stick powders did. I've never seen flash hole deburring have that effect with any other gun or powder.

The bottom line: some things just have to be tried to see if they matter in your particular shooting system. If you have the only gun that cares, no information or advice based on experience with other guns will be apropos. You just have to try it and see.
 
I once acquired a lot of range brass of various head stamps. Norma and Lapua by far was the most consistent. Federal was second. Winchester was heavier and I've heard will last longest with hot loads. I resized, measured the necks for concentricity, and trimmed the cases to length before weighing and culling out brass. All looked like once fired brass.

That's my experience for what it's worth.
 
Long life and accuracy will tend to lean toward Lapua. Application would / could alter that recommendation. Hunting...I use Winchester brass if they make it for that desired caliber...it’s cheaper cost, performs well for its intended use and if in the heat of the hunt I loose it or forget to pick it up ( shame on me) it’s no big deal. One of my best 308 loads is in Winchester brass and it’s on its 6th firing you boot.
 
Mostly I use Lapua and Norma, and don’t do much preloading prep, other than to trim to length, which might be an unnecessary step, though it does give me the case neck bevel I want.

Many years ago I used only Norma cases in my very accurate 220 Swift. It was tough getting replacement brass back then, so I switched to Winchester brass and prepped it to the max. With the case prep, outside neck turning included, it shot as well as the Norma had. It didn’t last as long as the Norma did though, but no slouch when it came to accuracy.

If a fellow wants great brass that needs no prep at all, look to Nosler brass. Not quite as durable, in my opinion, as Lapua and Norma, but fully prepped and hand selected (so they say).
 
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